The Free Will of the Individual in Relation to the Action of the Modes of Nature

The ego-consciousness lives within the illusion of having free will and making its own independent decisions. A closer examination shows us that the individual is not an ‘island’ unto himself; rather, he is a result of innumerable factors from genetics, to pre-natal influences, to interactions with family, friends, peers, co-workers, as he grows and develops, to the health factors and condition of his physical body, nervous envelope and mind, environmental factors, societal factors, economic factors, political factors, and the influence of media, marketing and advertising and ‘manufactured needs’ created by those influences that push and mold his choices. There is also the impulsion caused by past action, the law of cause and effect, the law of Karma, which may even transcend a specific lifetime and carry impulsions forward in the overall growth of the psychic being and the maturity of the consciousness through numerous lifetimes.

All of these forces operate under the impulsion of the Gunas, the modes of Nature. The Bhagavad Gita describes how man’s decisions and actions are driven by the Gunas as if “mounted on a wheel”. The universal forces act through the various modalities of interfacing with the individual, in most cases unrecognized and unseen, and once we internalize them we believe that we have made a free and independent decision. In this case, free will is very much an illusion. True free will resides in the Divine Consciousness and only when the individual ego is transcended and merges its being into that Divine Consciousness can it be said there is truly an action of free will at the individual level.

A disciple asks: “I have not understood this: ‘At best we have only the poor relative freedom which by us is ignorantly called free will. But that is at bottom illusory, since it is the modes of Nature that express themselves through our personal will; it is force of Nature, grasping us, ungrasped by us that determines what we shall will or how we shall will it. Nature, not an independent ego, chooses what object we shall seek, whether by reasoned will or unreflecting impulse, at any moment of our existence.’ [citation from Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis of Yoga, pg. 88]

The Mother responds: “Not understood? What do you mean, ‘not understood’? It’s a fact, there is nothing to understand, it’s like that.”

“I have explained this to you I don’t know how many times. You think it is you who decide: these are impulses coming from outside. You think you are conscious of your will: it is a consciousness which is not yours. And everything… you are made up entirely of something which is the forces of Nature expressing a higher Will of which you are unconscious.”

“Only, one doesn’t understand this except when one can come out of one’s ego, though it be only for a moment; for the ego — and this is its strength — is convinced that it alone decides. But if one looks attentively, one notices that it is moved by all sorts of things which are not itself.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.8 Life — A Mass of Vibrations, pp. 179-180